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Walter White’s fate was set in stone long before Breaking Bad reached its explosive finale. No twist or turn could have changed the destiny of the once-humble chemistry teacher who transformed into the most notorious drug kingpin, as his story was always leading to death.
But the exact outcome of those final episodes was far from certain. Vince Gilligan, the series’ mastermind, once revealed in the Breaking Bad insider podcast that the writers toyed with countless alternative versions before settling on the one that aired.
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One major marker was a flash-forward in the season five premiere,“Live Free or Die,” where Walt, who was living under an alias in New Hampshire, returns to Albuquerque to purchase an M-60 machine gun.
What wasn’t set in stone was why he needed that weapon, who he intended to use it on, or how he ended up in hiding in the first place. That single moment served as a narrative flag planted in the distance, guiding the writers as they pieced together his final act.
The possibilities were endless. At one point, the team considered having Walt unleash his newly acquired firepower to break Jesse out of prison. The principle of Chekhov’s gun, the idea that if a weapon appears early in a story, it must be fired before the end, is certainly applied here.
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But the writers weren’t sure who the target would be. That uncertainty actually led to the creation of Uncle Jack’s gang since a machine gun seemed more suited for mowing down a group of villains than taking out a single foe. An alternate, more chaotic idea involved Walt turning the gun on police officers, but that was quickly dismissed. After all, as much as Walt had become an antihero, the show never positioned him as someone who would slaughter innocent people.
Other versions of the ending took Walt in entirely different directions. The New Hampshire exile was always part of the plan, but what he did there was up for debate.
Perhaps he’d start a new life, complete with a new job or even a new family. Some ideas were more mundane, like Walt teaching at a local education center or channeling his meticulous nature into making a flawless batch of peanut brittle, a subtle nod to his lost passion for cooking meth.
Not all scrapped ideas revolved around Walt. Skyler, his wife, nearly had a much darker fate. In one chilling draft, she agreed to go on the run with Walt, only later to take her own life in a dingy motel bathroom. Gilligan pitched this version during an early discussion with AMC and Sony executives, but the writing team ultimately rejected it as too bleak, even for Breaking Bad.
And then there was Walt Jr. While Jesse famously dodged an early demise with the original plan to kill him off in season one, Walt’s son was also in danger of meeting a tragic end.
One particularly grisly storyline involved Walt capturing and torturing the man who had killed Jesse, amputating and cauterizing his limbs one by one. Things would take an even darker turn when Walt Jr. stumbled upon the horrifying scene. Trying to free the victim, he would inadvertently trigger a booby-trapped gun, resulting in both their deaths in a storm of bullets. The idea was, thankfully, abandoned.
“This show would have been, as you can tell from the story I just told, a very different show, indeed, if not for all the collaboration, starting in the writing room,” said Gilligan.
Looking back, it’s clear that Breaking Bad could have ended in countless ways, many of them even more twisted than what fans ultimately saw. But Gilligan remains content with the version that made it to screen, one where Walt frees Jesse, provides for his family in his own warped way, and finally drops the facade, admitting that his meth empire was never about anything but himself.
In the end, he dies on his terms, neither redeemed nor forgiven, but in control. And for Breaking Bad, that felt just right.
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